James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

22 comments:

I have wondered how you sustain this day after day. Thanks for making it clear. My favorite line was about obsolete traditions and hot new trends being one and the same. I retired a few years ago from teaching elementary school. Amazingly, the same truth pertains to swings of the educational trend pendulum. All this leaves one question. What is the job of the employee sitting on your shoulder in the picture on the top left each day? Looks like a high level advisor...

A. Once a month you take a full day to browse your sketchbooks, search the net to compile 20 topic that you just have to post (5 min. work). And the other 10 topics to fill the month will popup along the way (reader's suggestions, news item, weather).

B. You try to spend one hour every day to create a topic. Sometimes you manage to create up to 5 topics in that one hour - a stock for days when you have little time.

C. A combination of the two : along the way you have compiled dozens of written out topics, not to mention the list of topic ideas.But nevertheless, you try to create each day's topic on the fly.

Mr. Burns: This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll have written the greatest novel known to mankind. (reads one of the typewriters) "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?!" You stupid monkey!

I trust you would treat these employees well--I hope the same goes for whoever really worked with these animals to get these pictures taken. I imagine it takes a lot to get a chimp into a suit, and there are more and less pleasant ways to achieve this end.

I see your Art Historian has not only a cloth collar but also a chain around his neck--these aren't merely his eclectic fashion choices, are they?

I'm not easily amused by animals put in contrived situations for the sake of entertainment, though I wouldn't chafe so strongly at your use of these photos if you weren't the person who introduced us to a place where dinosaurs, humans and dolphins (the last two being present-day species whose intelligence and emotivity I presume are being presented in your books without any fantastical embellishment) coexist in utopia, and also a man who instructs us to compassionately examine the stories that are suggested in the details of visual images.

Stevo, I share your concerns about mistreatment of animals, and I understand if you're not amused. But please keep in mind that I didn't take these photos; the one of the chimp at the typewriter was taken decades ago. I am fascinated by the history of how humans have identified themselves with animals, and on this blog I've done other posts that identify the captive chimp smile as a grimace, and that explore animal characters.

Thank you for your response, Jim. I only wrote because I assumed you did care about animal treatment. It seems almost impossible for anyone not to identify with animals to some degree or another, and I am certain I responded negatively to this post because of my own indentifying with animals as fellow creatures with their own creaturely interests, although I hope in this case I haven't anthropomorphized them in doing so.

I very much appreciated the past posts you just linked to (I had to delete the last forward-slash in their URLs to see them); in fact I'd recalled the information about the grimacing chimp as I was writing you about contrived monkey poses, but I had forgotten that I'd learned that information from you in the first place!

Jim, Bravo for having the integrity and honesty to bring your ghost writers out into the open and give them the credit they deserve. They produce a fine product. Now are you prepared to go the rest of the way and tell us who paints your paintings for you?

This blog is a delight. Every time I stop by here, I wonder why I bother looking at anything else.